Machine translation has been a staple feature of Gmail on desktop for a long time. Like many other advanced features, it’s something that the service’s smartphone app sorely lacks. If you want to translate an email, your best bet is to copy the body and paste it on a translator like Google Translate. That step soon won’t be necessary, as Gmail is finally introducing built-in email translations on the mobile version.
As announced by Google on its Workspace Updates blog, the company has added native translation to the Gmail app on smartphones. If you want to translate an email, all you need to do is open one in a different language (as in, any that’s different from the display language you chose for Gmail) and the app will automatically suggest translating the body for you.
By tapping on the dismissible banner above the body, Google Translate will automatically detect the language the email is written in and then translate the contents for you to the best of its ability. It’s compatible with a total of 100 languages, just like the desktop version.
If the app doesn’t show this dismissible banner for whatever reason, you can always tap on the three-dot menu and select the option to translate the email manually. If you happen to speak multiple languages and don’t need a translation for some of them, there is also an option to manually set languages you don’t want translated. Likewise, you can also select languages that you want the app to always translate. This is all right in line with the translation behavior on Gmail for desktop.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Herald Port journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.